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The Sci-Fi Anthology’s Revival Isn’t Only Seen, It’s Heard

With the revival of the scripted radio drama via podcasts, old radio formats are finding new life, including the science fiction anthology program. A radio format that transferred to television in the 1960s has returned to an audio-based medium through podcasts like the Within the Wires, Magnus Archives, Escape Pod, and X Minus One. Further, sub-genres within sci-fi anthologies are being revised including that of scripted radio drama, frame stories, short story readings, and even rerun classics.

Remixing old formats with new technology, podcasts have flourished in recent years, reviving talk programming, scripted serial dramas, and it is no less true with one of radio’s oldest formats, the anthology program. However, where podcasts diverge from their television brethren in the revival of the sci-fi anthology genre-format is the inclusion of “remediated” aesthetics like theater, news programming, and radio story hour (readings of short stories submitted by authors and in public domain), but even aesthetics not associated with the audio programming at all.

For instance, Ursula Vernon’s podcast The Hidden Almanac (featured above) uses an aesthetic style of The Farmer’s Almanac (albeit a twisted one) read aloud. Including segments such as in this day in history, Feast Days, garden tips, lunar phases, and faux-advertisements, this micro-podcast averages 3-4 minutes an episode, far shorter than most podcasts, which typically run 45 minutes to an hour. The series does so In part due to the brevity of the remediated aesthetic it pulls from and in part due to the limited resources available for the anthology project. Still, by utilizing an aesthetic that requires brevity, the anthology can produce short, high-quality, short standalone fictions in a set format akin to an episode.

Other examples of untraditional remediated aesthetics found in podcast’s sci-fi anthology remediated aesthetics are those of an audio archive in the Magnus Institute in The Magnus Archives, hotel incident logs in The Hotel and the Theater of Tomorrow, and depending on the season, relaxation tapes, museum audio guides, and dictaphone recordings in Within the Wires.

The Sci-Fi Anthology’s Revival Isn’t Only Seen, It’s Heard

With the revival of the scripted radio drama via podcasts, old radio formats are finding new life, including the science fiction anthology program. A radio format that transferred to television in the 1960s has returned to an audio-based medium through podcasts like the Within the Wires, Magnus Archives, Escape Pod, and X Minus One. Further, sub-genres within sci-fi anthologies are being revised including that of scripted radio drama, frame stories, short story readings, and even rerun classics.

Remixing old formats with new technology, podcasts have flourished in recent years, reviving talk programming, scripted serial dramas, and it is no less true with one of radio’s oldest formats, the anthology program. However, where podcasts diverge from their television brethren in the revival of the sci-fi anthology genre-format is the inclusion of “remediated” aesthetics like theater, news programming, and radio story hour (readings of short stories submitted by authors and in public domain), but even aesthetics not associated with the audio programming at all.

For instance, Ursula Vernon’s podcast The Hidden Almanac (featured above) uses an aesthetic style of The Farmer’s Almanac (albeit a twisted one) read aloud. Including segments such as in this day in history, Feast Days, garden tips, lunar phases, and faux-advertisements, this micro-podcast averages 3-4 minutes an episode, far shorter than most podcasts, which typically run 45 minutes to an hour. The series does so In part due to the brevity of the remediated aesthetic it pulls from and in part due to the limited resources available for the anthology project. Still, by utilizing an aesthetic that requires brevity, the anthology can produce short, high-quality, short standalone fictions in a set format akin to an episode.

Other examples of untraditional remediated aesthetics found in podcast’s sci-fi anthology remediated aesthetics are those of an audio archive in the Magnus Institute in The Magnus Archives, hotel incident logs in The Hotel and the Theater of Tomorrow, and depending on the season, relaxation tapes, museum audio guides, and dictaphone recordings in Within the Wires.